Tag Archive for Utrecht School of the Arts

I found some theory about interactive, adaptive, nonlinear game music that hasn’t been posted on Captivating Sound yet. It’s an oldie from 2011 by Than van Nispen tot Pannerden, Sander Huiberts, Sebastiaan Donders and Stan Koch.

Interactive music, in e.g. video games, often tends to be complex both in the creative and the technological part. Video games, that have any interactivity connected to the music, often have simplistic music and music technology. The sounding results vary greatly in quality, both in musical aesthetics and in interactive meaningfulness.

One of the interactive music strategies available is horizontal re-sequencing. In this paper experiences with a simple nonlinear music player (the nln-player), using this strategy, are being presented.

Reference:
van Nispen tot Pannerden, T., Huiberts, S., Donders, S., & Koch, S. 2011, The nln-player: A system for nonlinear music in games. Paper presented at Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference 2011, University of Huddersfield, England.

A little off topic, but a great achievement. Have a look at Grim, a ‘vertical slice’ shooter beta by student group Morepolygons from The Utrecht School of the Arts. Impressive visual quality in full HD resolution…http://grim.morepolygons.com/

The IEZA framework defines the communication by means of audio in games. Richard van Tol and I published the theory of IEZA in an article on Gamasutra.

Based on our review of literature and repertoire we have formulated a framework that uses an alternate approach to classify game audio: the IEZA framework. The primary purpose is to refine insight in the communication by means of game audio by providing a coherent organization of four domains belonging to two dimensions.

IEZA framework can be used to conceptualise the communication by means of game audio

The authors would like to thank Jan IJzermans for his conceptual contribution to IEZA, as well as the feedback to the article.

IEZA is featured in the following book chapter by Ulf Wilhelmsson and Jakob Wallén. The authors combine IEZA with the model for the production of film sound by Walter Murch and the affordance theory by Gibson.

Wilhelmsson, U. and Wallén, J. A Combined Model for the Structuring of Computer Game Audio. In: Grimshaw, M. (2010). Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments. University of Bolton, UK.